1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improved roller skates and methods for making the same and, in particular embodiments, to a high-performance roller skates having a light-weight wheel bracket and light-weight wheels defining generally spherical shaped roller surfaces which allow a skater to lean or incline the skate to a relatively large degree.
2. Description of Related Art
Early roller skate designs employed generally disk-shaped wheels having relatively narrow outer peripheral surfaces defining the rolling surfaces. The rolling surfaces are the surfaces of the wheels which contact the floor or ground during a controlled roll on the floor or ground. The rolling surface of a typical conventional wheel design abruptly ends at each side wall of the wheel. Thus, if a skater leaned too far to one side while skating, the rolling surfaces of the skate wheels would lose contact with the floor or ground, causing the skater to lose control and/or fall to that side.
Various prior roller skate designs employed four of such disk-shaped wheels supported on a pair of axles. Two wheels were supported on one axle mounted toward the front of the skate and two wheels were supported on the other axle mounted toward the back of the skate. Early roller skate wheels were made of generally hard materials, such as steel or ceramic materials. More modern roller skate wheels have been made of a softer rubber or plastic material.
Recently, "in-line" skates have become popular. These "in-line" skates have, for example, four generally disk-shaped wheels, each supported on its own axis, arranged in a line along the length of the skate. In various "in-line" skate designs, the mounting brackets for coupling the wheels and axles to the shoe part extend adjacent the side walls of the wheels. The location of these mounting brackets tends to allow portions of the bracket to scrape the ground or floor, if the skater where to lean the skate too far to either side. Thus, the degree to which the skater can lean, for example, during high speed turns or trick maneuvers, is severely limited by the wheel mounting bracket, as well as by the generally disk-like shape of the wheels.
"In-line" skates can, to some extent, give the skater a riding sensation which is closer (relative to the two-wheels -per-axle roller skates) to that of riding on ice skates. Typical ice skates are provided with a thin blade for contacting the ice. Generally, the bottom edge of the thin blade can remain in contact with the ice, even when the skater leans the skate to one side, e.g., during a high-speed turn. However, as discussed above, typical "in-line" roller skates cannot be leaned to a significant degree to one side without scraping the wheel bracket against the ground and/or without the user's ankles collapsing inward and the rolling surface of the wheels losing contact with the ground, as discussed above. Thus, typical "in-line" skates still do not provide performance characteristics equal to or near those provided by ice skates.